The five Whitbread (category) Award winners are announced today, 8th January 2003, as follows:

Spies by Michael Frayn (Whitbread Novel Award)
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht (Whitbread First Novel Award)
The Ice Age by Paul Farley (Whitbread Poetry Award)
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled by Self Claire Tomalin (Whitbread Biography Award)
Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay (Whitbread Children's Book Award)

Tomalin, 69,  former literary editor of the Sunday Times and Frayn, 69, a prolific journalist and playwright as well as novelist, are the first married couple to feature on the shortlists.  Both said they were delighted when they discovered that they had won their categories, despite the fact that it means they now go head-to-head for the main award.   As Tomalin says, "It was a complete surprise, because the other biographies on the shortlist are all so good. I'm still reeling - very pleased, naturally - but now the competition is even fiercer, so I try to stay calm".

Other winners include renowned music critic and journalist Norman Lebrecht, who picks up the Whitbread First Novel Award at the age of 54 for The Song of Names.  Window-cleaner's son Paul Farley has won the Whitbread Poetry Award with only his second collection of poetry, The Ice Age, the follow-up to his hugely successful first collection, The Boy From The Chemist is Here to See You.  And Derby-based author Hilary McKay's Saffy's Angel , described by one critic as "deserving of a place alongside Little Women and The Railway Children", wins the Whitbread Children's Book Award.

These five winners each receive £5,000 and now go on to compete for the Whitbread Book of the Year (worth £25,000) which will be selected on Tuesday 28th January by a panel of nine judges.  The panel will be chaired by broadcaster and journalist Ian Hislop.  The winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year will be announced at a presentation ceremony at The Brewery later that evening, hosted by Kirsty Young.

The Whitbread Book Awards, now in their 32nd year, aim to celebrate the most enjoyable British writing of the past year.  The awards are unique for their celebration of the most enjoyable book of the year, regardless of category.  Last year's Whitbread Book of the Year was awarded to Philip Pullman for The Amber Spyglass, the first time that a children's book had been the overall winner.

Amazon.co.uk, an official partner to the Whitbread Book Awards, is offering a 30% discount on
each of the five award winners, between 8th and 28th January. 

ends

Notes for Editors:

Photographs of authors and book jackets are  available royalty-free from website www.whitbread-bookawards.co.uk. High-resolution photography suitable for media reproduction. Please contact Sunita Rappai for password details on 020 7202 2822.

1. Information attached on:
· Each of the winning books and authors
· Final judging panel
2. The Whitbread Book Awards, now in their 32nd year, aim to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing. The Awards, established in 1971, confirm Whitbread - the leisure business - as one of the longest-running sponsors of British writing. 
 3. The total prize fund for the Whitbread Book Awards now stands at £50,000, consisting of Whitbread Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book Award winners (£5,000 each) and the Whitbread Book of the Year winner (£25,000).
4.  To be eligible for the 2002 Awards, books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2001 and 31 October 2002.
5. Images can be downloaded from the Internet at www.whitbread-bookawards.co.uk
6. Past Whitbread Book of the Year Winners
Since its introduction in 1985, the Whitbread Book of the Year has been won five times by a Novel, three times by a First Novel, three times by a Biography and five times by a collection of Poetry.  Last year, it was won for the first time by a children's book. 

Previous winners are: 

 2001 The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (Children's)
 2000 English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (Novel)
 1999 Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (Poetry)
 1998 Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (Poetry)
 1997 Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes (Poetry)
 1996 The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney (Poetry)
 1995 Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (First Novel)
 1994 Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (Novel)
 1993 Theory of War by Joan Brady (Novel)
 1992 Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington (First Novel)
 1991 A Life of Picasso by John Richardson (Biography)
 1990 Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley (Novel)
 1989 Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes (Biography)
 1988 The Comforts of Madness by Paul Sayer (First Novel)
 1987 Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan (Biography)
 1986 An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (Novel)
 1985 Elegies by Douglas Dunn (Poetry)

2002 Whitbread Novel Award
Spies by Michael Frayn
Faber & Faber £14.99 (RRP)

About the book:
In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live, the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite.  But in their childhood world, things are not what they seem.  As Keith, the leader in all their enterprises authoritatively informs the trusting Stephen, the whole district is riddled with secret passages - hideaways for any number of murderers and secret agents.  Then one day, Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family…

About the author:
Michael Frayn is probably best known as a dramatist - in particular for his play Noises Off, a backstage comedy produced with great success in the West End and on Broadway, and Copenhagen.  At 69, he is the author of nine other novels, including Headlong (1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker and the Whitbread,13 plays, and several film scripts.   Born above the Victoria Wine store in Mill Hill, North London, the son of a sales representative for Turner's Asbestos Cement, Frayn was expected to follow in his father's footsteps.  Instead this lean, urbane man has packed houses as a playwright, been a notable journalist - making his name as a Guardian columnist - a prize-winning novelist and also a translator and documentary film writer.   

While Spies took a year to write, the idea had been with Frayn for more than twenty years, inspired by an incident from his own childhood, when a friend told him that he suspected his mother of being a spy.  He says that spies offer a rich vein for writers of fiction - as a Russian speaker, he even had his own "banal" brush with the intelligence services during the 1950s, as a Cambridge undergraduate.  "In the normal transactions of life, you want to understand other people and you offer other people some sort of insight into yourself.  If you're spying, you have to distort that."  Frayn currently lives in Regent's Park, London with his second wife - and fellow award-winner - Claire Tomalin.  His 29-year marriage to Gillian Palmer, with whom he has three daughters, was dissolved in 1989.

What the Whitbread judges said:
"We chose Spies out of an exceptionally strong shortlist because we felt that it was a book that was so subtle, so beautifully rendered and with so many different facets - comic, nostalgic, poignant - that it will be read with enormous pleasure for many years to come."

What the critics said:
"..a lovingly conceived, handsomely detailed novel in a conservative vein with a vivid sympathy for how lonely, scared and helpless being a child often feels, and how easily and eagerly we forget it…It is never less than witty, ingenious, and a pleasure to read."  The Guardian

Judges:
Michael Dobbs, Author
Vanessa Eversfield Operations Director, Ottakars
Peter Kemp Fiction Editor, Sunday Times

Shortlist, selected from a total of 105 entries:
White Lightning by Justin Cartwright (Sceptre)
Rumours of a Hurricane  by Tim Lott (Viking)
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (Viking)

Previous Whitbread Novel Award winners include:
Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate (2001)
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2000 Whitbread Book of the Year) 
Rose Tremain Music and Silence by Rose Tremain (1999)

2002 Whitbread First Novel Award
The Song Of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Review £12.99 (RRP)

About the book:
Two boys are growing up in wartime London. Martin is an only child, imprisoned in swottish loneliness. Then Dovidl enters his home, a refugee violinist from Warsaw. 'I am genius,' says Dovidl. 'You have information. Together we make good team.'  His arrival brings merriment and love, mischief and menace. Blood brothers, they roam the ruined city, finding tragedy and triumph, sex and crime. It is the time of their lives, their finest hour. Then Dovidl disappears, on the afternoon of his international debut. Martin is broken-hearted, his father near-bankrupted, the police dumbfounded. Where has he gone? How can a genius escape his date with destiny? How could he betray a brother? Martin is condemned to forty years of humdrum half-life until, one wintry night, an unexpected musical clue sets him on the trail to an astonishing act of self-discovery, and renewal.

About the author:
Norman Lebrecht has been described as "a writer who strikes accord and discord among readers and with equal passion" - this referring to his writings on classical music rather than his acclaimed first novel which, according to The Times, "steers the fine line between passion and sentimentality with deft aplomb".  At 54, Lebrecht is one of the older winners of this category; while he has already written ten acclaimed, often controversial, books, including The Maestro Myth (1991) and Covent Garden: The Untold Story (2000), The Song of Names is his first novel.   

Currently Assistant Editor of the Evening Standard, Lebrecht fell into music journalism almost by accident, having previously been a war correspondent and a writer of books on sociology and psychology.  His weekly column in the Daily Telegraph was described as "required reading" for the arts world while his lebrecht.live series on Radio 3 and the web attract e-mails and phone calls from all over the world.  He has also made several television documentaries and lectured in universities from Cambridge to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  He lives in North London and is working on two more fiction books.

What the Whitbread judges said:
"Not just a brilliant first novel, but a brilliant novel - thought-provoking, lyrical and profound.  An accomplished and moving book, dealing in fascinating themes of genius and the search for racial identity."  

What the critics said:
"…an assured first novel…polished prose and an understanding of artistic imperatives underpin a strong Jewish story."  Daily Mail 

Judges:
Joanna Trollope, Author
James Daunt, Daunt Books
Bonnie Greer, Playwright, Novelist, Broadcaster 

Shortlist, selected from a total of 76 entries:
The End of My Tether by Neil Astley (Flambard)
Homage to a Firing Squad by Tariq Goddard (Sceptre)
The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru (Hamish Hamilton)

Previous Whitbread First Novel Award winners include:
Something Like a House by Sid Smith (2001)
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
White City Blue by Tim Lott (1999)

2002 Whitbread Poetry Award
The Ice Age by Paul Farley
Picador £7.99 (RRP)

About the book:
Paul Farley's debut collection, The Boy From The Chemist Is Here to See You, was one of the most celebrated debuts of the nineties.  The poems in this new collection are as engaged and engaging as ever but also display a new philosophical depth:  Farley's gift is to uncover the evidence so often overlooked by less attentive observers, finding - in childhood games, dental records and dog-eared field guides - the details by which we are proven and elegised.  

About the author:
Acclaimed author of award-winning debut collection, The Boy From the Chemist Is Here To See You,  window- cleaner's son Paul Farley was brought up on a sprawling council estate on the outskirts of Liverpool. He says he thinks that a love of sea shanties as a boy got him into appreciating the rhythm of words but it was painting that first occupied him.  After attending Chelsea School of Art - moving from the country's poorest area to its richest - he spent thirteen years in London, painting in his little studio, pulling out when he could stand the smell of turpentine no longer. 

After attending night school to do writing, he published his first collection in 1998.  He has described the moment as like having a baby - "I felt like I was on birth row".   The Boy From The Chemist Is Here To See You went on to win both the Forward Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, with Paul also being named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1999.  He spent two years as poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust's Dove Cottage base in Grasmere.  The Ice Age, only his second collection of poetry, was also shortlisted for this year's Forward and TS Eliot Prize and was the Poetry Book Society Choice for summer 2002.  Paul has just started a new job, teaching creative writing at Lancaster University.

What the Whitbread judges said:
"Of all the collections that we discussed, these were the poems we kept returning to, with admiration and enjoyment.  They encompass the past and the present, the mundane and the timeless and the personal and the public with enviable assurance.  Poems whose surprises survive many readings."
 
What the critics said:
"Funny, observant, brilliantly musical…streetwise, erudite, elusive, but very accessible"  Financial Times

Judges:
Wendy Cope, Poet
Jonathan Barker, Deputy Director, Literature, British Council
Tom Sutcliffe, Critic and Broadcaster

Shortlist, selected from a total of 69 entries:
Something For The Ghosts by David Constantine (Bloodaxe Books)
Voodoo Shop by Ruth Padel (Chatto & Windus)
The Beautiful Lie by Sheenagh Pugh (Seren)

Previous Whitbread Poetry Award winners include:
Bunny by Selima Hill (2001)
The Asylum Dance by John Burnside (2000)
Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (1999 Whitbread Book of the Year)

2002  Whitbread Biography Award
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self  by Claire Tomalin
Viking £20.00 (RRP)

About the book:
In Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, Claire Tomalin has taken a new approach to Pepys and his diaries.  For the first time, Tomalin reveals the personal side of Pepys - the married man, the private man, the man who sought out pleasure and meditated in print on his own reactions, the man who cherished secret ambitions, both financial and political.  Through this portrait, Claire Tomalin has also brought to life the 17th Century, one of the most exciting periods in English history.

About the author:
"It took me about five years in all to do Pepys", Claire Tomalin has said.  "It was a huge job and at times I thought I was completely mad."   Her hugely-acclaimed biography of Pepys is also her first of a man since she wrote about Shelley in 1980.  Her interest in him actually started in the 1960s, when she was given an abridged version of the diaries by her then husband, as she lay ill with mumps.  As she says, "From a biographer's point of view, if anyone's skin can be got under, it's Pepys's.  I feel I know more about what it is to be a man from him than I ever did before".

Born in London of a French father and English mother, Claire grew up in Welwyn Garden City.  She attended Dartington Hall, the famous progressive school in Devon and then Newnham College, Cambridge.  She has worked in publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times.  While there has been a lot of joy and professional acclaim in her life, there has also been sorrow: her first husband died tragically in 1973 and she has also lost two children. Today she is happily married to second husband - and fellow award-winner - Michael Frayn.  At present they are preparing to move to a house in outer London, with a new bigger garden.   (Claire has said that she loves gardening "almost more than anything").  Between them, the couple have eight grandchildren.

What the Whitbread judges said:
"A superb biography by a writer at the height of her powers and a humane, compassionate portrait of a great man.  A wonderful introduction, not just to the diaries but to an astonishing piece of history."     

What the critics said:
 "..Immaculately well done..she writes with beautiful clarity…there is about this biography a wisdom, an unforced feeling that the biographer has a sense of the way life is…"
The Mail on Sunday

Judges:
Adam Sisman, Author
Dylan Jones, Editor, GQ
Karen Tyerman, Assistant Director, Libraries and Lifelong Learning, Brent Council 

Shortlist, selected from a total of 101 entries:
Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter (Macmillan)
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox (Harper Collins)
The Real Mrs Miniver by Ysenda Maxtone Graham (John Murray)

Previous Whitbread Biography Award winners include:
Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami (2001)
Bad Blood: A Memoir by Lorna Sage (2000)
Berlioz, Volume II: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns  (1999 )

2002 Whitbread Children's Book Award
Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
Hodder Children's Books £10.00 (RRP)

About the book:
When Saffron Casson discovers that she's adopted, life is never quite the same again. Her artistic parents and doting siblings adore her, but Saffy wants a piece of her past. So when her grandfather bequests a stone angel to her, Saffy knows she has to find it. Realising that her childhood in Siena holds the key, she secretly stows away on a car trip to Siena, with her new friend, Sarah. Meanwhile, the rest of her family are engaged in their own wacky projects. Caddy, a hopeless student, is studying for her A Levels and desperately trying to pass her driving test. Indigo, the sole boy of the Casson family, is determined to rid himself of this fear of heights. And the youngest, Rose, a budding artist, has a knack for baiting her pompous dad, with entertaining results . . .

About the author:
Hilary McKay was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, the eldest of four girls.  From a very early age she read voraciously and grew up in a household of readers.  Hilary says of herself as a child, "I anaesthetised myself against the big bad world with large doses of literature.  The local library was as familiar to me as my own home".   Somewhat unusually, she has a scientific background, having read Botany and Zoology at St Andrew's University and then going on to work as a biochemist in an Analysis Department.  While she enjoyed the work, she had a burning desire to write.  After the birth of her two children, she decided to devote more time to it and gave up her job.  Her first book The Exiles was published in 1991 and went on to win The Guardian Children's Fiction Award and The Smarties Prize. 

Since then, she has published close to twenty books, novels, shorter fiction and picture books as well as answering letters from enthusiastic readers.  Hilary lives in a small village in Derbyshire with her husband, a teacher, and two children, Bella and Jim.  When not writing, she says she loves walking, reading and having friends to stay.  A sequel to Saffy's Angel - Indigo's Star - will be published in 2003. 

What the Whitbread judges said:
"Saffy's Angel is a delight from start to finish - a great feel-good book with characters you want to stay with forever.   Warm, beautifully crafted and always original,  it's also pure fun - a book to recommend without hesitation."

What the critics said:
"Hilary McKay pitches the tone just right with a tale that is both funny and touching."  The Guardian

Judges:
Geraldine McCaughrean, Author
S F Said, Author and Commentator
Jane Robertson, Buyer, Children's Books, Harrods

Shortlist, selected from a total of 96 entries:
Exodus by Julie Bertagna (Young Picador)
Sorceress by Celia Rees (Bloomsbury)
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (Scholastic)

Previous Whitbread Children's Book Award winners include:
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2001 Whitbread Book of the Year)Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin (2000)
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban by J K Rowling (1999)

Ian Hislop (Chairman), Editor, Private Eye

Wendy Cope, Writer representing Poetry Panel

Michael Dobbs, Writer representing Novel Panel

Julian Fellowes, Actor; Oscar-winning scriptwriter (Gosford Park)

Geraldine McCaughrean, Writer representing Children's Panel

Hermione Norris, Actress

Joely Richardson, Actress

Adam Sisman, Writer representing Biography Panel

Joanna Trollope, Writer representing First Novel Panel

ends